THE NEXT BIG DOGWALK?: Today’s we’re presenting a guest editorial by Glenn Mickens who is not particularly enjoying saying “we told you so” to all the people who are just finding out that the east side coastal area and trail they used to enjoy as an undeveloped area is now a big deal attraction with rules up the wazoo.
No one listened when people shouted from the rooftops to watch out, predicting this would be the end result. And we don’t expect anyone to listen this time to those warning about what’s happening at Hapa Road in Po`ipu which has been designated for “preservation” by being turned into “Hapa Trail” .
Sounds good, eh? Well so did the “bike path” before it turned into the “dog path”, as most councilpersons have inadvertently referred to it. That includes former Chair, now Mayor, Kaipo Asing who a couple of weeks ago used the magic words we’ve been using for a month or so now before he turned red amidst the laughs the gaff generated.
Some are warning now that Hapa Trail is going to turn into another “bike path” fiasco. Just watch last week’s council meeting for some hair-raising concerns from people like Ken Taylor and Elaine Dunbar.
They warn that local residents who use the dirt road now as a place to get away from all the tourists in the area will eventually find themselves in the latest “Disneyland” tourist trap if developers get the “traffic plan” they funded- which includes “sprucing up” Hapa Road and changing it’s name- to be an official county plan... along with some $400,000 of county money to tart up the sprucing.
Juan Wilson has a piece today describing the adjacent development to be called “Villages at Po`ipu”, another piece of work from piece of work Stacy Wong and his Knudsen Trust, the people who brought you the Monkeypod Shopping Center by cutting down all the monkeypods. It worth reading if only to remind us that this is going to be an expensive county boondoggle to turn another local hangout into a tourist amenity.
The county is even thinking of trying to get it declared part of some kind of federal historical something-or-other to get more funding linked to “economic development”.
We’re not really sure what all this is leading to but after watching the council discussion it’s easy to smell something rotten in Po`ipu that stinks worse than just your usual timeshare blight..
Read Glen’s post-mortem of sorts on the bike path and think about what’s going to happen when Hapa Road becomes Hapa Heritage Trail.
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by Glenn Mickens
So, the drum beat for this White Elephant bike path continues; TGI A1 story "No EIS for path from Nawiliwili to Ahukini" with only a possibility of Federal funding drying up hindering its construction. With 80% Federal dollars coming from tax payers one pocket and 20% coming from the other, this money tree is ripe for picking by contractors, designers, planners and whoever else can get their hands on it.
Many months ago Council members Rapozo and Iseri-Carvalho wisely held the administration's feet to the fire by asking them a series of 25 questions or more about this ill planned path---total cost, exact route, maintenance, security, land acquisition etc. Answers were never given and thus the path continues on with our money going down the proverbial black hole.
Always remember that the Federal Guidelines as outlined in their Transportation Enhancement booklet states that this "path" will be for transportation and not for recreational purposes. Yet, our council is now spending hours of their valuable time deciding if the law allowing no animals in parks should be changed to allow dogs on this path----unbelievable!!! In other words we are proposing to violate the Federal law even more by using this path for a "dog walk" and not to use it for transportation to get cars off the roads and alleviate traffic, one of Kauai's worst problems!
The projected cost of this 16 mile path (once estimated by the planners as 23 miles) was $51 million dollars but with a laundry list of problems surfacing regularly, this figure will undoubtedly go far north from that amount. At the best case scenario this path will be nothing but segments along an unknown route.
And even if the 16(?) miles were completed what benefit on any prioritized list will it ever have for the total population of this Island? Use the time, energy and money being devoted to this path to get our cane haul roads open to give all people a chance to move and not sit in traffic.
There are some beautiful bike/equestrian paths in California BUT these paths were programmed into the planning process before the area was developed. We are trying to retrofit a path into places already built up ( trying to go through the Foodland/Safeway shopping center!!) and making a round peg fit into a square hole which will never work.
Obviously the 386 page document which was published by R.M. Towill Corp. said that no EIS was necessary took a lot of time and was costly so only the positives were stated---a real no brainer. But again, why no mention of maintenance and security costs or assaults that can happen on isolated sections of that proposed path?
Citizens of Kauai, just ask yourselves if the bang you will get for the obscene amount of money being spent on this path is worth it to you. If not, then when you vote be sure you elect the people who are looking after EVERYONE and not just a select few.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
CHASIN’ THE CHICKENS AGAIN
CHASIN’ THE CHICKENS AGAIN: Well thanks to Ian Lind’s posting of the actual filings in the latest Dance of the Headless Chicken court case, at the risk of turning into a 24/7 “All Kevin Cronin All the Time” blog, we do have more news to clarify and supplement yesterday’s review of the latest Cronin machinations.
Yesterday we reported on the old switcheroo someone pulled in getting an Aug 7 court ruling that Chrystn Eads was “disqualified” from the House race for Kirk Caldwell’s old state house seat and that he was citing her case now as the reason for allowing replacement candidate Isaac Choy to run- this after Choy had been chosen to replace Caldwell causing the Republican Party to sue saying the replacement was outside the three day window for replacement candidates.
We wondered who filed the suit heard on Aug 7- how did it get into court? We hypothesized it might have been the Republicans or the Honolulu County Clerk.
But we should have know because the filer was none other than Cronin himself.
We have no inside info as to why Cronin did so but the only reason would be that he was ready to be reversed on the Caldwell decision pegging his date of withdrawal to when the elections office received his withdrawal in writing the day after the filing deadline, not his verbal withdrawal before the deadline.
To review the actual law again HRS 11-117 says nothing about written withdrawals except in cases of “ill health”
It says:
§11-117 Withdrawal of candidates; disqualification; death; notice. (a) Any candidate may withdraw not later than 4:30 p.m. on the day immediately following the close of filing for any reason and may withdraw after the close of filing up to 4:30 p.m. on the twentieth day prior to an election for reasons of ill health. When a candidate withdraws for ill health, the candidate shall give notice in writing to the chief election officer if the candidate was seeking a congressional or state office, or the candidate shall give notice in writing to the county clerk if the candidate was seeking a county office. The notice shall be accompanied by a statement from a licensed physician indicating that such ill health may endanger the candidate's life.
Despite this as we reported exclusively earlier an official state produced Candidate Fact Sheet says that, the law be damned, ALL withdrawals must be in writing.
The fact sheet says
Candidates may withdraw for any reason not later than the day immediately following the deadline to file nomination papers. To withdraw, the candidate must submit a written notice to the Chief Election Officer (for state and federal office candidacy) or to the appropriate City/County Clerk (for county office candidacy). (HRS Section 11-117).
Yesterday we weren’t quite sure how the news reports regarding the fact sheet fit into it all. But an examination of Cronin’s filings to have Eads’ “withdrawal” re-trigger Choy’s placement on the ballot puts the false fact sheet at the heart of his case for dating Caldwell’s withdrawal.
Cronin goes to great lengths to use the fact sheet to justify his decision, even getting the Ballot Operations Section Head of the Office of Elections, Lori Tomczyk, to file an affidavit saying that all candidates got the fact sheet, even Caldwell
Cronin uses the fact sheet that misrepresents the law as the sole legal justification for his decision in the Caldwell-withdrawal-date decision he made last month and, even though this was a filing for summery judgment in court the actual citation of the relevant law- HRS 11-117- is nowhere in the brief, only many mentions of the “fact sheet”.
Oh and by the way the fact sheet says on it’s cover
This Fact Sheet is intended for informational purposes only and should not be used as an authority on the Hawaii election law and candidate deadlines... Consult the Hawaii Revised Statutes and other sources for more detailed and accurate requirements.
Cronin, under fire for the Caldwell ruling and knowing that the actual law says nothing about withdrawals being in writing in all circumstances, knew he was vulnerable if a ruling on it ever got before a judge.
Just the fact that Caldwell wasn’t challenging his ruling wasn’t enough because there was an outstanding Republican Party-filed suit contesting the “in writing” decision. And if a judge read the actual law he was pretty sure to overrule Cronin- overrule him in a case that was high profile, one for which Cronin has been under continual fire in the press and the blogs and only one of the myriad of Cronin’s actions that have put the elections chief’s job in jeopardy.
What to do, what to do?. How could he make his Caldwell decision go away?
Easy- by essentially suing himself to put the situation with Eads before a judge and getting an official ruling on her case without anyone to challenge it (because no one knew) and fait accompli allowing the Democrats to re-select Choy based on Eads case, not Caldwell’s... all before anyone knew about the done deal.
We had suspected that maybe in the early confusing days after the filing deadline- when the chickens were all first decapitated- someone filed a case thinking it was Eads who was being replaced by Choy rather than Caldwell due to erroneous press reports.
Eads, for those who don’t remember, did not get her papers filed with enough signatures until after the 4:30 p.m., July 22 deadline but was allowed by Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta to collect signatures and file at 4:50 p.m.- an action that Decosta said constituted a non-filing in a decision she made that week.
But Cronin, seeing a little wiggle room revived the filing, saying essentially that the clerk’s mistaken action in accepting the papers late constituted a filing.
And so he went to court to challenge the filing, got a ruing on Aug 7, wrote to the Democratic Party Chair Brian Schatz- who had earlier used his influence to get Decosta to accept Eads filing- who then re-selected Choy to be the replacement candidate, this time for Eads.
And that, Cronin claims, makes his Caldwell decision irrelevant, so moot.
This is sure to cause Republican’s heads to explode when they realize that Schatz’s phone call to Decosta at the 4:30 July 22nd filing deadline asking her to “err on the side of inclusion” and allow Eads to go outside, gather signatures and then file her papers, ended up assuring the Democrats would have a candidate in the race for a House seat in a Democratic stronghold district which otherwise would go to the only person left in the race, a Republican.
Cronin is claiming that even though Eads filing was not legal and should by all reason be adjudged to have never happened, because of Decosta’s error in accepting it- at Schatz’s request- Eads had to be “disqualified” for the office she never qualified for.
The file contains no briefs from anyone but Cronin and his brief goes into convoluted detail as to supposed legal reasons why no one needed to be notified or allowed to challenge it.
Even though Decosta had ruled the filing wasn’t complete, Cronin now says it wasn’t “officially” not filed until he got a ruling from the court – a ruling that re-opened the door for Schatz’s Democratic Party to re-insert Choy’s name on the ballot without having to deal with the actual law in the Caldwell decision.
We’re not sure what’s contained in it but, as reported today in an article about an appeal of a recent administrative hearings officer’s ruling blasting Cronin for selecting an overpriced, second-rate-security election system from Hart InterCivic :
The Republican Party filed another suit Aug. 8 alleging that Cronin and the Office of Elections improperly allowed Democrat Isaac Choy to stand as a state House candidate for the 24th District (Manoa).
We haven’t seen that suit but fear it will spur another chapter in the Hawai`i Shyster Chronicles... making the three main mayoral-wannabe dunces and 15 or so clueless council would-be-clowns on Kaua`i very happy we suspect..
Don’t worry- we’ll get to you
Yesterday we reported on the old switcheroo someone pulled in getting an Aug 7 court ruling that Chrystn Eads was “disqualified” from the House race for Kirk Caldwell’s old state house seat and that he was citing her case now as the reason for allowing replacement candidate Isaac Choy to run- this after Choy had been chosen to replace Caldwell causing the Republican Party to sue saying the replacement was outside the three day window for replacement candidates.
We wondered who filed the suit heard on Aug 7- how did it get into court? We hypothesized it might have been the Republicans or the Honolulu County Clerk.
But we should have know because the filer was none other than Cronin himself.
We have no inside info as to why Cronin did so but the only reason would be that he was ready to be reversed on the Caldwell decision pegging his date of withdrawal to when the elections office received his withdrawal in writing the day after the filing deadline, not his verbal withdrawal before the deadline.
To review the actual law again HRS 11-117 says nothing about written withdrawals except in cases of “ill health”
It says:
§11-117 Withdrawal of candidates; disqualification; death; notice. (a) Any candidate may withdraw not later than 4:30 p.m. on the day immediately following the close of filing for any reason and may withdraw after the close of filing up to 4:30 p.m. on the twentieth day prior to an election for reasons of ill health. When a candidate withdraws for ill health, the candidate shall give notice in writing to the chief election officer if the candidate was seeking a congressional or state office, or the candidate shall give notice in writing to the county clerk if the candidate was seeking a county office. The notice shall be accompanied by a statement from a licensed physician indicating that such ill health may endanger the candidate's life.
Despite this as we reported exclusively earlier an official state produced Candidate Fact Sheet says that, the law be damned, ALL withdrawals must be in writing.
The fact sheet says
Candidates may withdraw for any reason not later than the day immediately following the deadline to file nomination papers. To withdraw, the candidate must submit a written notice to the Chief Election Officer (for state and federal office candidacy) or to the appropriate City/County Clerk (for county office candidacy). (HRS Section 11-117).
Yesterday we weren’t quite sure how the news reports regarding the fact sheet fit into it all. But an examination of Cronin’s filings to have Eads’ “withdrawal” re-trigger Choy’s placement on the ballot puts the false fact sheet at the heart of his case for dating Caldwell’s withdrawal.
Cronin goes to great lengths to use the fact sheet to justify his decision, even getting the Ballot Operations Section Head of the Office of Elections, Lori Tomczyk, to file an affidavit saying that all candidates got the fact sheet, even Caldwell
Cronin uses the fact sheet that misrepresents the law as the sole legal justification for his decision in the Caldwell-withdrawal-date decision he made last month and, even though this was a filing for summery judgment in court the actual citation of the relevant law- HRS 11-117- is nowhere in the brief, only many mentions of the “fact sheet”.
Oh and by the way the fact sheet says on it’s cover
This Fact Sheet is intended for informational purposes only and should not be used as an authority on the Hawaii election law and candidate deadlines... Consult the Hawaii Revised Statutes and other sources for more detailed and accurate requirements.
Cronin, under fire for the Caldwell ruling and knowing that the actual law says nothing about withdrawals being in writing in all circumstances, knew he was vulnerable if a ruling on it ever got before a judge.
Just the fact that Caldwell wasn’t challenging his ruling wasn’t enough because there was an outstanding Republican Party-filed suit contesting the “in writing” decision. And if a judge read the actual law he was pretty sure to overrule Cronin- overrule him in a case that was high profile, one for which Cronin has been under continual fire in the press and the blogs and only one of the myriad of Cronin’s actions that have put the elections chief’s job in jeopardy.
What to do, what to do?. How could he make his Caldwell decision go away?
Easy- by essentially suing himself to put the situation with Eads before a judge and getting an official ruling on her case without anyone to challenge it (because no one knew) and fait accompli allowing the Democrats to re-select Choy based on Eads case, not Caldwell’s... all before anyone knew about the done deal.
We had suspected that maybe in the early confusing days after the filing deadline- when the chickens were all first decapitated- someone filed a case thinking it was Eads who was being replaced by Choy rather than Caldwell due to erroneous press reports.
Eads, for those who don’t remember, did not get her papers filed with enough signatures until after the 4:30 p.m., July 22 deadline but was allowed by Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta to collect signatures and file at 4:50 p.m.- an action that Decosta said constituted a non-filing in a decision she made that week.
But Cronin, seeing a little wiggle room revived the filing, saying essentially that the clerk’s mistaken action in accepting the papers late constituted a filing.
And so he went to court to challenge the filing, got a ruing on Aug 7, wrote to the Democratic Party Chair Brian Schatz- who had earlier used his influence to get Decosta to accept Eads filing- who then re-selected Choy to be the replacement candidate, this time for Eads.
And that, Cronin claims, makes his Caldwell decision irrelevant, so moot.
This is sure to cause Republican’s heads to explode when they realize that Schatz’s phone call to Decosta at the 4:30 July 22nd filing deadline asking her to “err on the side of inclusion” and allow Eads to go outside, gather signatures and then file her papers, ended up assuring the Democrats would have a candidate in the race for a House seat in a Democratic stronghold district which otherwise would go to the only person left in the race, a Republican.
Cronin is claiming that even though Eads filing was not legal and should by all reason be adjudged to have never happened, because of Decosta’s error in accepting it- at Schatz’s request- Eads had to be “disqualified” for the office she never qualified for.
The file contains no briefs from anyone but Cronin and his brief goes into convoluted detail as to supposed legal reasons why no one needed to be notified or allowed to challenge it.
Even though Decosta had ruled the filing wasn’t complete, Cronin now says it wasn’t “officially” not filed until he got a ruling from the court – a ruling that re-opened the door for Schatz’s Democratic Party to re-insert Choy’s name on the ballot without having to deal with the actual law in the Caldwell decision.
We’re not sure what’s contained in it but, as reported today in an article about an appeal of a recent administrative hearings officer’s ruling blasting Cronin for selecting an overpriced, second-rate-security election system from Hart InterCivic :
The Republican Party filed another suit Aug. 8 alleging that Cronin and the Office of Elections improperly allowed Democrat Isaac Choy to stand as a state House candidate for the 24th District (Manoa).
We haven’t seen that suit but fear it will spur another chapter in the Hawai`i Shyster Chronicles... making the three main mayoral-wannabe dunces and 15 or so clueless council would-be-clowns on Kaua`i very happy we suspect..
Don’t worry- we’ll get to you
Monday, August 18, 2008
OUTFOXED AGAIN
OUTFOXED AGAIN: Just when it couldn’t get any more devoid of rationality it turns out that there’s now another wrinkle in the Dance of the Headless Chickens in the Honolulu filing deadline debacle today after Honolulu Advertiser reporter Derrick DePledge dug up an Aug 7 court ruling certifying a “replacement” for a candidate that was never an official candidate.
The replacement candidate, Isaac Choy, is the same one that was named in the Kirk Caldwell mess on July 26. But in a “that was our story and we were sticking to it but this one is much better” spiel from self declared “De Facto” Elections Chief Kevin Cronin, it is now Chrystn Eads- who never filed completed papers- that was “disqualified” to put Choy on the ballot.
And that didn’t happen until a formerly secret Aug. 7 court ruling.
Cronin claims that Eads’ whatever-it-was was not official until Aug 7 when a judge ruled on a case apparently filed by Republicans in the confusion as to who was being replaced when they filed the challenge.
Conflicting newspaper reports in the days after the filing deadline resulted in the Republicans originally challenging the “replacement” based on erroneous-at-the-time reports by Richard Borreca in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Eads was the one that “needed” replacing
But DePledge’s report at the time that it was indeed Caldwell that was being replaced turned out to be the correct one.
Caldwell was eliminated for filing for a second office-Honolulu County Council- at the same time he was still running for his House seat. Cronin ruled Caldwell’s verbal withdrawal wasn’t sufficient and when Caldwell filed “in writing” the next day Cronin’s subsequent ruling left him not running for anything.
The Republicans challenged the date of the Caldwell withdrawal saying it happened the day of the filing deadline, July 22, and in a ruling that flies in the face of the actual law Cronin ruled that the withdrawal came the day after the filing deadline and a “three day replacement” rule let the Democrats put Choy on the ballot- and do it via telephone on a Saturday after Cronin had ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal via telephone was not sufficient.
But, it appears the Republican case or perhaps one from Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta, either on her own or as a reaction to the Republican challenge in the Eads matter (the article doesn’t make it clear who filed for the court ruling), went to court and in an August 7 ruling Eads was “officially” not on the ballot, which Cronin appears to be interpreting as a “disqualification”.
There was no explanation of how a candidate who never officially filed could be disqualified.
Therefore the state is claiming that Decosta’s ruling a few days after the filing deadline that Eads filing was incomplete wasn’t official” until the Aug. 7 ruling and therefore- get this- the Democrats had three days from Aug 7 to pick Choy (again).
And therefore, supposedly, the date of Caldwell’s withdrawal is moot because now Choy is replacing Eads.
Borreca is obviously psychic.
Actually though, the law requires that county clerks go to circuit court for these rulings and though we have some reason to believe it was Decosta who filed for the Aug 7 ruling, she refused to get a court ruling for the one she made that disqualified Caldwell.
This all means that, Cronin and the state is contending, it doesn’t matter when Caldwell withdrew for purposes of the actual Republican challenge saying that the withdrawal took place Tuesday July 22 and therefore the clock ran out on Friday- and therefore the Democrats missed the three day deadline.
And since Caldwell is not challenging when his withdrawal actually took place- even though he would be eligible to run for council if it had been “official” on July 22 instead of the 23rd- Cronin’s ruling in that case that is wasn’t official until the 23rd is for all intent and purpose now irrelevant.... and so it’s legality is no longer a question
In another odd yet relevant tidbit, today it was reported that, in trying to justify his contrary to law ruling in the Caldwell withdrawal, Cronin cited a state “Candidate Information Sheet” we exclusively reported on a week or so ago.
The sheet contains erroneous “written withdrawal required” information but contains a disclaimer that says the pamphlet may not be in compliance with the law and to check the actual law if need be
Cronin’s list of dirty deeds grows. So far he has:
-Failed to register to vote, a requirement for his job, until this month after being hired in February. He said he was too busy and always intended to take the required 30 seconds to complete, stamp and put the form in the mail. He declared himself the “De Facto” Elections Chief when the lack of voter registration came light.
-Ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal had to be in writing despite past practices of the clerk’s and elections’ offices, and the clerk’s assurance to Caldwell that his withdrawal was official. Caldwell’s oral withdrawal was followed by a call by Decosta’s office to Cronin’s office saying he’d withdrawn. Cronin’s ruling came despite the fact that the law itself does not call for a written withdrawal except under for “health reasons”.
-Sent the ballots to the printer without the legally required review by non-partisan and party observers. Cronin said it was all ok because they turned out to be accurate- and has parsed rulings and manipulated the courts to keep them correct.
-Was severely chastised and reversed by a hearings officer for picking a known-to-be-remarkably-hackable Hart InterCivic election system- a firm he reportedly has had ties to- at a cost almost three times that of a competing bid. Cronin blamed the procurement laws rather than take responsibility
-Was reported here, in an exclusive report, to have been a defendant in a suit regarding keeping blacks off the ballot in 1988 when he was a lawyer for the Wisconsin elections office. After two lower court rulings apparently said he had acted so negligently or purposefully that he had to stand civil trial, a US appeals court ruled he had immunity from the suit- the type of immunity that all officials have for decisions in their official capacity.
We probably left out something. Perhaps the most egregious thing in all this is that the Elections Commission has given him a clean bill of health and is not even considering firing him.
--------------------#-------------
The replacement candidate, Isaac Choy, is the same one that was named in the Kirk Caldwell mess on July 26. But in a “that was our story and we were sticking to it but this one is much better” spiel from self declared “De Facto” Elections Chief Kevin Cronin, it is now Chrystn Eads- who never filed completed papers- that was “disqualified” to put Choy on the ballot.
And that didn’t happen until a formerly secret Aug. 7 court ruling.
Cronin claims that Eads’ whatever-it-was was not official until Aug 7 when a judge ruled on a case apparently filed by Republicans in the confusion as to who was being replaced when they filed the challenge.
Conflicting newspaper reports in the days after the filing deadline resulted in the Republicans originally challenging the “replacement” based on erroneous-at-the-time reports by Richard Borreca in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Eads was the one that “needed” replacing
But DePledge’s report at the time that it was indeed Caldwell that was being replaced turned out to be the correct one.
Caldwell was eliminated for filing for a second office-Honolulu County Council- at the same time he was still running for his House seat. Cronin ruled Caldwell’s verbal withdrawal wasn’t sufficient and when Caldwell filed “in writing” the next day Cronin’s subsequent ruling left him not running for anything.
The Republicans challenged the date of the Caldwell withdrawal saying it happened the day of the filing deadline, July 22, and in a ruling that flies in the face of the actual law Cronin ruled that the withdrawal came the day after the filing deadline and a “three day replacement” rule let the Democrats put Choy on the ballot- and do it via telephone on a Saturday after Cronin had ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal via telephone was not sufficient.
But, it appears the Republican case or perhaps one from Honolulu County Clerk Denise Decosta, either on her own or as a reaction to the Republican challenge in the Eads matter (the article doesn’t make it clear who filed for the court ruling), went to court and in an August 7 ruling Eads was “officially” not on the ballot, which Cronin appears to be interpreting as a “disqualification”.
There was no explanation of how a candidate who never officially filed could be disqualified.
Therefore the state is claiming that Decosta’s ruling a few days after the filing deadline that Eads filing was incomplete wasn’t official” until the Aug. 7 ruling and therefore- get this- the Democrats had three days from Aug 7 to pick Choy (again).
And therefore, supposedly, the date of Caldwell’s withdrawal is moot because now Choy is replacing Eads.
Borreca is obviously psychic.
Actually though, the law requires that county clerks go to circuit court for these rulings and though we have some reason to believe it was Decosta who filed for the Aug 7 ruling, she refused to get a court ruling for the one she made that disqualified Caldwell.
This all means that, Cronin and the state is contending, it doesn’t matter when Caldwell withdrew for purposes of the actual Republican challenge saying that the withdrawal took place Tuesday July 22 and therefore the clock ran out on Friday- and therefore the Democrats missed the three day deadline.
And since Caldwell is not challenging when his withdrawal actually took place- even though he would be eligible to run for council if it had been “official” on July 22 instead of the 23rd- Cronin’s ruling in that case that is wasn’t official until the 23rd is for all intent and purpose now irrelevant.... and so it’s legality is no longer a question
In another odd yet relevant tidbit, today it was reported that, in trying to justify his contrary to law ruling in the Caldwell withdrawal, Cronin cited a state “Candidate Information Sheet” we exclusively reported on a week or so ago.
The sheet contains erroneous “written withdrawal required” information but contains a disclaimer that says the pamphlet may not be in compliance with the law and to check the actual law if need be
Cronin’s list of dirty deeds grows. So far he has:
-Failed to register to vote, a requirement for his job, until this month after being hired in February. He said he was too busy and always intended to take the required 30 seconds to complete, stamp and put the form in the mail. He declared himself the “De Facto” Elections Chief when the lack of voter registration came light.
-Ruled that Caldwell’s withdrawal had to be in writing despite past practices of the clerk’s and elections’ offices, and the clerk’s assurance to Caldwell that his withdrawal was official. Caldwell’s oral withdrawal was followed by a call by Decosta’s office to Cronin’s office saying he’d withdrawn. Cronin’s ruling came despite the fact that the law itself does not call for a written withdrawal except under for “health reasons”.
-Sent the ballots to the printer without the legally required review by non-partisan and party observers. Cronin said it was all ok because they turned out to be accurate- and has parsed rulings and manipulated the courts to keep them correct.
-Was severely chastised and reversed by a hearings officer for picking a known-to-be-remarkably-hackable Hart InterCivic election system- a firm he reportedly has had ties to- at a cost almost three times that of a competing bid. Cronin blamed the procurement laws rather than take responsibility
-Was reported here, in an exclusive report, to have been a defendant in a suit regarding keeping blacks off the ballot in 1988 when he was a lawyer for the Wisconsin elections office. After two lower court rulings apparently said he had acted so negligently or purposefully that he had to stand civil trial, a US appeals court ruled he had immunity from the suit- the type of immunity that all officials have for decisions in their official capacity.
We probably left out something. Perhaps the most egregious thing in all this is that the Elections Commission has given him a clean bill of health and is not even considering firing him.
--------------------#-------------
Sunday, August 17, 2008
SLY DOGS
SLY DOGS: In a spectacle one must see to believe the Kaua`i County Council went into executive session and conducted public policy behind closed doors once again at Wednesday’s meeting, where they heard terms of a “secret” lawsuit settlement that could break environmental laws and strip approval conditions from two proposed Kapa`a beachfront resorts.
The developers are reportedly suing the county to remove some “givebacks” in things like sewage, roads and/or other planning-commission-approved conditions for the projects. That is the case prospectively being “settled”.
And in a related case Nani Rogers and 1000 Friends of Kaua`i are suing both of them to get a seemingly required EIS process triggered as well as stop the conditions from being removed..
Early on at the meeting attorney David Kimo Frankel, representing Rogers, told the council of various provisions that the developer probably wanted stripped, saying the planning process generally requires open public hearings and explaining how land use decisions deserved the most deference to public input, citing laws to that effect in a few mainland and local cases..
He and local public interest attorney Greg Myers, representing 1000 Friends, said that in this case any “settlement” should go through that open process and be openly discussed as far as the exact provisions that might be frittered away by the council in any “settlement”.
That settlement they said is one through which the developers hoped to avoid any court ruling thereby getting out of the type of environmental review that state law apparently requires.
Although Frankel didn’t want to challenge the secret briefing, once he and Myers were done testifying others weren’t shy about decrying it.
Members of the pubic unanimously pleaded with the council not meet secretly to hear the “settlement” to no avail with more than a dozen people asking the council to honor the open planning process and not pull a fast one behind closed doors.
Some read HRS 343 and 205 the EIS and Special Management Area laws respectively which people feared would be ignored in any settlement.
Others, like anti-Superferry leader Rich Hoepner, compared the prospective action to the “Act 2” special legislative session exempting the Superferry from the EIS law and asked that the council not consider dong essentially the same thing to allow the projects to “get out of” having to do an environmental assessment (EA).
Although Myers had said essentially the same thing with little or no reaction, this spurred gestures of disbelief denial and derision from councilmembers, including a prosecutorial-like grilling by our next prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, challenging any thesis of similarity.
!000 Friends’ Dave Dinner then recounted much of the public process for the project that went on before the Planning Commission and expressed displeasure at some of the “deletions” that may be in the settlement as well as the prospect of deliberations toward a decision being conducted behind closed doors.
And, in an impassioned speech County Council candidate Ken Taylor was incredulous in recounting the flouting of the recently discovered “secret” sunshine law (HRS 92-71) that has had open meeting advocates on Kaua`i waving the Charter around to get compliance with our peculiar more stringent “claims-only” provision (Charter Sect 3.07).
But from the council’s response you’d have thought mom and apple pie was under attack.
Rather than talk about any prospective contents of the settlement- ones they were about to hear and possibly decide upon- once the attorneys were safely back in their seats, councilmembers deflected criticism by putting many “hot seat” inhabitants on the defensive, grilling them for the sources of their information about what was and what wasn’t specifically in the settlement and refusing to discuss any “prospective” specifics.
“Tell us if you know (what’s in the settlement)... because we don’t know.... What do you know?” said Mel Rapozo. “I don’t know.”.
“We don’t know...“We’re gong to find out” in executive session said attorney JoAnn Yukimura
“Where did you hear that” demanded Iseri. “We don’t even know... How could you?”
The answer was that the speakers had been informed via email as to the general contents of the briefs filed by Frankel, Myers, the developers’ lawyers and the county’s lawyers as to what the conditions the developer objected to were.
The council was flabbergasted Imagine- people coming to testify didn’t have the legal briefs!.
The briefs are of course are public information, available to anyone- even lazy or disingenuous councilmembers. Yet the council still claimed to not know anything and excoriated anyone who thought they might know and might want to discuss it with them in the open.
Councilmembers howled shrieks of derision when the question “where did you hear that was in the settlement” was answered with “in an email”. And of course no answer was sufficient unless the witness knew- not suspected- what the precise terms of the proposed settlement were and whipped out voluminous notated folder to prove it.
Having successfully turned the discussion over to the Mad Hatter, the council continued to first befuddle and then, after three minutes, shut down each member of the public.
Although councilmembers apparently had a pretty good idea what was or at least what could be in the settlement concerning roads, sewage treatment and an EIS exemption- as evidenced by their previous discussions with Frankel and Myers- any discussion of that that was now off the table.
But don’t worry, Furfaro assured the gathered. The actual decision would be made in public... as if no one had ever seen one of those perfunctory, 30 second “Call to order, all in favor- recess”. decisions that often follow three-hour closed confabs.
So rather than tell the community the next step in what has been a public process before the Planning Commission thus far the council feigned ignorance and met and heard the secret settlement.
And of course, late in the afternoon the council came out of executive session to report nothing. Although they apparently didn’t accept the settlement they spent hours discussing it with the public waiting outside in the hall.
And given the council’s history of lack of adherence to open meetings requirements and past deceitful pronouncements, there’s really no assurance they didn’t okay the settlement in closed session since all that was officially done in public was to “receive” the communication announcing the secret session.
While all this was happening new Council Chair Jay Furfaro once again used the latest new tools to stop actual public policy debate that gets politically uncomfortable..
A few times now, just when exchanges between a member of the public and a councilmember finally becomes substantive, he interrupts them saying- and we’re not making this up- “we’re not here to get into a debate” and words to that effect.
Only on Kaua`i- the leader of the legislative body declares that their meetings will be devoid of debate.
It’s hard to say why but every time we watch Kaua`i Council meetings, this old childhood ditty seems to come to mind.
Miss Lucy had a monkey
She called him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bath tub
To teach him how to swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
The monkey died that evening
With a bubble in his throat
In walked the Doctor
In walked the Nurse
In walked the Lady
With the Alligator Purse
“Mumps!” said the Doctor
“Measles!” said the Nurse
“Nothing!” said the Lady
With the Alligator Purse
Out walked the Doctor
Out walked the Nurse
Out walked the Lady
With the monkey in her purse.
We’re not sure which of the respective county honchos such as the mayor, the council chair, the department heads or the county attorneys is playing which of the parts of Miss Lucy, the doctor, the nurse or the lady with the alligator purse.
But all we need is a mirror to figure out who the monkey is..
The developers are reportedly suing the county to remove some “givebacks” in things like sewage, roads and/or other planning-commission-approved conditions for the projects. That is the case prospectively being “settled”.
And in a related case Nani Rogers and 1000 Friends of Kaua`i are suing both of them to get a seemingly required EIS process triggered as well as stop the conditions from being removed..
Early on at the meeting attorney David Kimo Frankel, representing Rogers, told the council of various provisions that the developer probably wanted stripped, saying the planning process generally requires open public hearings and explaining how land use decisions deserved the most deference to public input, citing laws to that effect in a few mainland and local cases..
He and local public interest attorney Greg Myers, representing 1000 Friends, said that in this case any “settlement” should go through that open process and be openly discussed as far as the exact provisions that might be frittered away by the council in any “settlement”.
That settlement they said is one through which the developers hoped to avoid any court ruling thereby getting out of the type of environmental review that state law apparently requires.
Although Frankel didn’t want to challenge the secret briefing, once he and Myers were done testifying others weren’t shy about decrying it.
Members of the pubic unanimously pleaded with the council not meet secretly to hear the “settlement” to no avail with more than a dozen people asking the council to honor the open planning process and not pull a fast one behind closed doors.
Some read HRS 343 and 205 the EIS and Special Management Area laws respectively which people feared would be ignored in any settlement.
Others, like anti-Superferry leader Rich Hoepner, compared the prospective action to the “Act 2” special legislative session exempting the Superferry from the EIS law and asked that the council not consider dong essentially the same thing to allow the projects to “get out of” having to do an environmental assessment (EA).
Although Myers had said essentially the same thing with little or no reaction, this spurred gestures of disbelief denial and derision from councilmembers, including a prosecutorial-like grilling by our next prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, challenging any thesis of similarity.
!000 Friends’ Dave Dinner then recounted much of the public process for the project that went on before the Planning Commission and expressed displeasure at some of the “deletions” that may be in the settlement as well as the prospect of deliberations toward a decision being conducted behind closed doors.
And, in an impassioned speech County Council candidate Ken Taylor was incredulous in recounting the flouting of the recently discovered “secret” sunshine law (HRS 92-71) that has had open meeting advocates on Kaua`i waving the Charter around to get compliance with our peculiar more stringent “claims-only” provision (Charter Sect 3.07).
But from the council’s response you’d have thought mom and apple pie was under attack.
Rather than talk about any prospective contents of the settlement- ones they were about to hear and possibly decide upon- once the attorneys were safely back in their seats, councilmembers deflected criticism by putting many “hot seat” inhabitants on the defensive, grilling them for the sources of their information about what was and what wasn’t specifically in the settlement and refusing to discuss any “prospective” specifics.
“Tell us if you know (what’s in the settlement)... because we don’t know.... What do you know?” said Mel Rapozo. “I don’t know.”.
“We don’t know...“We’re gong to find out” in executive session said attorney JoAnn Yukimura
“Where did you hear that” demanded Iseri. “We don’t even know... How could you?”
The answer was that the speakers had been informed via email as to the general contents of the briefs filed by Frankel, Myers, the developers’ lawyers and the county’s lawyers as to what the conditions the developer objected to were.
The council was flabbergasted Imagine- people coming to testify didn’t have the legal briefs!.
The briefs are of course are public information, available to anyone- even lazy or disingenuous councilmembers. Yet the council still claimed to not know anything and excoriated anyone who thought they might know and might want to discuss it with them in the open.
Councilmembers howled shrieks of derision when the question “where did you hear that was in the settlement” was answered with “in an email”. And of course no answer was sufficient unless the witness knew- not suspected- what the precise terms of the proposed settlement were and whipped out voluminous notated folder to prove it.
Having successfully turned the discussion over to the Mad Hatter, the council continued to first befuddle and then, after three minutes, shut down each member of the public.
Although councilmembers apparently had a pretty good idea what was or at least what could be in the settlement concerning roads, sewage treatment and an EIS exemption- as evidenced by their previous discussions with Frankel and Myers- any discussion of that that was now off the table.
But don’t worry, Furfaro assured the gathered. The actual decision would be made in public... as if no one had ever seen one of those perfunctory, 30 second “Call to order, all in favor- recess”. decisions that often follow three-hour closed confabs.
So rather than tell the community the next step in what has been a public process before the Planning Commission thus far the council feigned ignorance and met and heard the secret settlement.
And of course, late in the afternoon the council came out of executive session to report nothing. Although they apparently didn’t accept the settlement they spent hours discussing it with the public waiting outside in the hall.
And given the council’s history of lack of adherence to open meetings requirements and past deceitful pronouncements, there’s really no assurance they didn’t okay the settlement in closed session since all that was officially done in public was to “receive” the communication announcing the secret session.
While all this was happening new Council Chair Jay Furfaro once again used the latest new tools to stop actual public policy debate that gets politically uncomfortable..
A few times now, just when exchanges between a member of the public and a councilmember finally becomes substantive, he interrupts them saying- and we’re not making this up- “we’re not here to get into a debate” and words to that effect.
Only on Kaua`i- the leader of the legislative body declares that their meetings will be devoid of debate.
It’s hard to say why but every time we watch Kaua`i Council meetings, this old childhood ditty seems to come to mind.
Miss Lucy had a monkey
She called him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bath tub
To teach him how to swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
The monkey died that evening
With a bubble in his throat
In walked the Doctor
In walked the Nurse
In walked the Lady
With the Alligator Purse
“Mumps!” said the Doctor
“Measles!” said the Nurse
“Nothing!” said the Lady
With the Alligator Purse
Out walked the Doctor
Out walked the Nurse
Out walked the Lady
With the monkey in her purse.
We’re not sure which of the respective county honchos such as the mayor, the council chair, the department heads or the county attorneys is playing which of the parts of Miss Lucy, the doctor, the nurse or the lady with the alligator purse.
But all we need is a mirror to figure out who the monkey is..
Saturday, August 16, 2008
SNIFFIN’ THE WRONG PACKAGE
SNIFFIN’ THE WRONG PACKAGE: It sounds like KPD has nothing better to do than bust low level drug offenders, according to an article in today’s local paper.
Apparently 24 “targeted street level users and dealers as well as mid-level dealers” were arrested over the last 2 ½ days, for various “drug” offenses.
No telling if, as is usually the case, the “dealers” were actually “overcharged” users or if the rights of the “innocent until proven guilty” were violated during the raids as the Kaua`i vice squad has famously been accustomed to doing for many years.
We can only hope that the reported presence of “members of the Maui Police Department, Hawai`i County Police Department and United States Marshals Service” kept their overzealous ways in check this time
But the lack of a mention of what specific “drugs” were involved makes us wonder how many were simple marijuana users and, if so, what the heck we’re doing using our already short staffed and thinly-funded police department for busting people for using an innocuous safe and effective medication.
Going after “street level users” of any drug is really absurd enough. Even if the type of drug being “used” is dangerous and destructive like methamhetamine, these people have a treatable illness and the fact that treatment-on-demand in virtually unavailable especially on Kaua`i speaks to the bass ackward nature of what our priorities are.
It raises the question as to how disconnected we on Kaua`i are from realties that are sweeping the rest of the country and, as reported recently, on the Big Island where people will be voting this year on a measure to make “personal use of marijuana a lower priority than all other laws”.
According to Big Island journalist/blogger Hunter Bishop
The Peaceful Skies petition that fell short of getting onto the November ballot by more than 2,000 signatures was revived by the Hawaii County Council on a 5-4 vote about an hour ago in Kona.
So a question will be on the November general election ballot that, if passed by a majority of voters, would direct the county Police Department to make enforcement of marijuana laws Hawaii County's lowest law enforcement priority.
According to the ordinance itself:
(t)he citizens of the Cities of Hailey, Idaho; Denver, Colorado; Seattle, Washington; Columbia, Missouri; Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Santa Barbara, Oakland, Santa Monica, and Santa Cruz, in California, and the citizens of Missoula County, Montana, all voted for Cannabis (marijuana) to be placed as law enforcement’s lowest law enforcement priority within the past five years.
But Kaua`i continues to dwell in the dark ages preferring to still persecute and prosecute the personal use of pakalolo and waste our resources in doing so.
According to a summery in the Hawai`i Tribune Herald the proposed ordinance- available in full at the Project Peaceful Sky web site- would, if passed,
-Make the possession of marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority for all cases, when the amount involved is less than 24 plants or 24 dried ounces, and the marijuana is on private property or being used on private property by people age 21 or older. (The distribution and sale or marijuana will not be protected. The use of marijuana on public property will not be protected.)
- Prevent law enforcement officials from being deputized or commissioned by the federal government for applicable marijuana cases.
- Prevent the County Council from accepting any funding for the handling of applicable marijuana cases.
- Prevent the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney from prosecuting applicable marijuana cases to the extent permitted by state law.
- Prevent the county from spending any money for the handling of applicable marijuana cases.
- Prevents the County Council from accepting any funds for marijuana eradication.
- Have the County Council work with the Police Department to develop a grievance procedure for individuals who believe they were wrongly prosecuted.
- Require a report every June 1 and Dec. 1 about the county's enforcement of marijuana laws.
- Require a letter from the county clerk every June 1 to the mayor, state lawmakers, Hawaii’s congressional delegation, the governor and the president. The letter will include this sentence: “The citizens of the County of Hawaii ... request that the federal and state branches of government remove criminal penalties for the cultivation, possession and use of Cannabis for adult personal use ...” These letters will continue “until state and federal laws are changed accordingly”
Yet all we hear is wacko postulates and fear mongering from our local politicians who believe the shibai of “gateway drug” and other absurd “reefer madness” rantings of those whose jobs depend on defending us from the scourge of marijuana.
While a short 500 miles away on the Big Island rationality apparently reigns
Stated in the findings of the ordinance are the following:
(a) The Institute of Medicine has found that Cannabis (marijuana) has medicinal value and is not a gateway drug.
(b) According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the use of Cannabis (marijuana) directly results in 0 (zero) deaths per year.
(c) According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the marijuana eradication program has not stopped Cannabis cultivation in the County of Hawai`i, rather the program has only decreased the availability of the plant, which increases it’s ‘street’ value, resulting in more crime.
(d) The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) also reported that a large increase of the use of methamhetamine, crack cocaine, and other hard drugs was related to the marijuana eradication program’s implementation.
(e) According to public record, the ‘mandatory program review’ for the marijuana eradication program, required by Section 3-16 of the County Charter to be performed at least once every 4 years, has never been performed in the 30 years that the program has existed.
(f) Law abiding adults are being arrested and imprisoned for nonviolent Cannabis offenses, clogging our court dockets, overcrowding our prisons, tying up valuable law enforcement resources and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in Hawai`i County alone each year.
When the heck are we going to wake up over here?.
Even if somehow you’re been brainwashed to think marijuana is a “dangerous drug” it’s impossible to deny that the “ice” epidemic is specifically tied to the eradication of marijuana as (c) states.
And nowhere is it more true than on Kaua`i.
It’s impossible to rationally dispute the fact that people who are prone to use drugs and can’t get “pot” turn to what’s available. And here and in other places- what’s available is methamhetamine and other more dangerous. drugs
There are, however, a growing number of progressive communities who have come to grips with this and no matter what they think of personal use of marijuana, they’ve figured out that if nothing else “harm reduction” is a no-brainer
But Mayoral candidate Mel Rapozo, and our next prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho routinely applaud and fund marijuana eradication with a psychopathic zeal while waxing poetic on the dangers of the evil weed.
They and the other five current councilmembers- and all past ones as well- have never opposed eradication much less the stridency of the local over-the-top rabid marijuana enforcement efforts.
As a matter of fact it’s plain to many that by any rational analysis politicians who support marijuana eradication and refuse to support legislation to basically stop enforcement of laws against its personal use can only be called a murderers.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it..
Apparently 24 “targeted street level users and dealers as well as mid-level dealers” were arrested over the last 2 ½ days, for various “drug” offenses.
No telling if, as is usually the case, the “dealers” were actually “overcharged” users or if the rights of the “innocent until proven guilty” were violated during the raids as the Kaua`i vice squad has famously been accustomed to doing for many years.
We can only hope that the reported presence of “members of the Maui Police Department, Hawai`i County Police Department and United States Marshals Service” kept their overzealous ways in check this time
But the lack of a mention of what specific “drugs” were involved makes us wonder how many were simple marijuana users and, if so, what the heck we’re doing using our already short staffed and thinly-funded police department for busting people for using an innocuous safe and effective medication.
Going after “street level users” of any drug is really absurd enough. Even if the type of drug being “used” is dangerous and destructive like methamhetamine, these people have a treatable illness and the fact that treatment-on-demand in virtually unavailable especially on Kaua`i speaks to the bass ackward nature of what our priorities are.
It raises the question as to how disconnected we on Kaua`i are from realties that are sweeping the rest of the country and, as reported recently, on the Big Island where people will be voting this year on a measure to make “personal use of marijuana a lower priority than all other laws”.
According to Big Island journalist/blogger Hunter Bishop
The Peaceful Skies petition that fell short of getting onto the November ballot by more than 2,000 signatures was revived by the Hawaii County Council on a 5-4 vote about an hour ago in Kona.
So a question will be on the November general election ballot that, if passed by a majority of voters, would direct the county Police Department to make enforcement of marijuana laws Hawaii County's lowest law enforcement priority.
According to the ordinance itself:
(t)he citizens of the Cities of Hailey, Idaho; Denver, Colorado; Seattle, Washington; Columbia, Missouri; Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Santa Barbara, Oakland, Santa Monica, and Santa Cruz, in California, and the citizens of Missoula County, Montana, all voted for Cannabis (marijuana) to be placed as law enforcement’s lowest law enforcement priority within the past five years.
But Kaua`i continues to dwell in the dark ages preferring to still persecute and prosecute the personal use of pakalolo and waste our resources in doing so.
According to a summery in the Hawai`i Tribune Herald the proposed ordinance- available in full at the Project Peaceful Sky web site- would, if passed,
-Make the possession of marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority for all cases, when the amount involved is less than 24 plants or 24 dried ounces, and the marijuana is on private property or being used on private property by people age 21 or older. (The distribution and sale or marijuana will not be protected. The use of marijuana on public property will not be protected.)
- Prevent law enforcement officials from being deputized or commissioned by the federal government for applicable marijuana cases.
- Prevent the County Council from accepting any funding for the handling of applicable marijuana cases.
- Prevent the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney from prosecuting applicable marijuana cases to the extent permitted by state law.
- Prevent the county from spending any money for the handling of applicable marijuana cases.
- Prevents the County Council from accepting any funds for marijuana eradication.
- Have the County Council work with the Police Department to develop a grievance procedure for individuals who believe they were wrongly prosecuted.
- Require a report every June 1 and Dec. 1 about the county's enforcement of marijuana laws.
- Require a letter from the county clerk every June 1 to the mayor, state lawmakers, Hawaii’s congressional delegation, the governor and the president. The letter will include this sentence: “The citizens of the County of Hawaii ... request that the federal and state branches of government remove criminal penalties for the cultivation, possession and use of Cannabis for adult personal use ...” These letters will continue “until state and federal laws are changed accordingly”
Yet all we hear is wacko postulates and fear mongering from our local politicians who believe the shibai of “gateway drug” and other absurd “reefer madness” rantings of those whose jobs depend on defending us from the scourge of marijuana.
While a short 500 miles away on the Big Island rationality apparently reigns
Stated in the findings of the ordinance are the following:
(a) The Institute of Medicine has found that Cannabis (marijuana) has medicinal value and is not a gateway drug.
(b) According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the use of Cannabis (marijuana) directly results in 0 (zero) deaths per year.
(c) According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the marijuana eradication program has not stopped Cannabis cultivation in the County of Hawai`i, rather the program has only decreased the availability of the plant, which increases it’s ‘street’ value, resulting in more crime.
(d) The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) also reported that a large increase of the use of methamhetamine, crack cocaine, and other hard drugs was related to the marijuana eradication program’s implementation.
(e) According to public record, the ‘mandatory program review’ for the marijuana eradication program, required by Section 3-16 of the County Charter to be performed at least once every 4 years, has never been performed in the 30 years that the program has existed.
(f) Law abiding adults are being arrested and imprisoned for nonviolent Cannabis offenses, clogging our court dockets, overcrowding our prisons, tying up valuable law enforcement resources and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in Hawai`i County alone each year.
When the heck are we going to wake up over here?.
Even if somehow you’re been brainwashed to think marijuana is a “dangerous drug” it’s impossible to deny that the “ice” epidemic is specifically tied to the eradication of marijuana as (c) states.
And nowhere is it more true than on Kaua`i.
It’s impossible to rationally dispute the fact that people who are prone to use drugs and can’t get “pot” turn to what’s available. And here and in other places- what’s available is methamhetamine and other more dangerous. drugs
There are, however, a growing number of progressive communities who have come to grips with this and no matter what they think of personal use of marijuana, they’ve figured out that if nothing else “harm reduction” is a no-brainer
But Mayoral candidate Mel Rapozo, and our next prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho routinely applaud and fund marijuana eradication with a psychopathic zeal while waxing poetic on the dangers of the evil weed.
They and the other five current councilmembers- and all past ones as well- have never opposed eradication much less the stridency of the local over-the-top rabid marijuana enforcement efforts.
As a matter of fact it’s plain to many that by any rational analysis politicians who support marijuana eradication and refuse to support legislation to basically stop enforcement of laws against its personal use can only be called a murderers.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it..
Friday, August 15, 2008
MOTHER HUBBARD’S LAMENT
MOTHER HUBBARD’S LAMENT: Government bureaucrats have never been known for their competence or honesty.
But with the way some are being ridiculed by judges lately you’d think people like Honolulu County clerk Denise Decosta and Chief Elections officer Kevin Cronin would show some integrity or at least shame- and resign.
Cronin’s penchant for making it up as he goes along- as pilloried by an administrative judge last week was- surpassed by Decosta in her convoluted attempt to keep a citizen initiative against rail in Honolulu off the ballot because even though it was legally submitted to qualify for the general election the petitioners mentioned a special election in their preface.
Judge Karl Sakamoto’s now “instant classic” ruling yesterday that “(t)he voice of the people should not be suffocated by the erroneous readings of the law by its own government" was apparently part of a new spate of recent rulings by judges asking government officials “what am I an idiot?” in light of their intentional administrative twistings of the law.
The actual Honlulu City Charter provisions- which trumps the confusing special ordinance and administrative rules- says:
Any petition for proposed ordinance which has been filed with the council at least ninety days prior to a general election and which has been certified by the clerk, shall be submitted to electors for the aforementioned general election."
So how old is Decosta? Six? When they read her the actual prevailing rules of the game she apparently pointed to an out of context phrase, showed us what her mommy said, put her fingers in her ears and yelled “You said it- nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah- I can’t hear you- nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.”
But on Kaua`i we’ve apparently got a new judge for whom the answer to what am I an idiot? is an unqualified “yes” when it comes to abuses of administrative a-holes
But what do you expect? Firth Circuit Court judge Kathleen Wantanbe came straight from the government bureaucracy to her perch on the bench and seemingly her rulings don’t just give the benefit of the doubt to government officials but they consider complaints about it to be a nuisance- just like her bureaucratic brethren .
Yesterday’s hearing in Joe Brescia’s genocide and desecration case was punctuated by a distinct flavor of telling the government that they can do no wrong if press reports are accurate.
First she ruled that only the reportedly allegedly corrupt Kaua`i State Archeologist Nancy McMahon could testify but not archeologist Dr. Michael “No Pun Intended” Graves who represented the aggrieved iwi and their descendents.
Independent reporter Joan Conrow described it this way this morning
Before the proceedings got to that place, Watanabe refused to qualify Dr. Michael Graves, a witness called by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., as an expert in Hawaiian archaeology. Never mind that he spent 21 years at UH teaching undergraduate and graduate students in archaeology and served as head of the department.
Since that prohibited Graves from discussing whether the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) acted properly in its treatment of the Naue burials, much of the hearing was devoted to Kauai state archaeologist Nancy McMahon defending her decisions regarding the burials there.
What a surprise- a career government lawyer deciding that self-serving government officials’ testimony is expert- even one whose job is in jeopardy, being under fire for not knowing what the heck she is doing, what the law really says and lying to both the Kaua`i Burial Council and Planning Commission- and denying a private sector university professor with no bone to pick, so to speak.
And what they were arguing about puts the meter on Wantanabe’s “what am I an idiot?” rating in the red zone.
As Star-Bulletin reporter Tom Finnegan said today
The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp.. argued that the state archaeologist reversed the decision of the Kauai Ni`ihau Burial Council when she allowed Brescia's contractors to build the home and cap seven grave sites with concrete.
Chandler's lawyers blame state Historic Preservation Division archaeologist and Kauai County Council candidate Nancy McMahon for pushing through both the permits at the county level and the burial council's plan to keep the burials in place. Then, the lawyers argued, she approved the contractor's plan without returning to the burial council for its input.
McMahon, who testified yesterday, said that... no evidence has been found that would make anyone believe the area was a cemetery, rather than 30 individual graves. (emphasis added)
However, Alan Murakami, Chandler's lawyer, said that the burial council wanted to preserve the burials as a unit, and McMahon took it on her own to interpret its ruling.
By allowing the house to be built atop the graves, rather than preserving them, "the state has disemboweled the burial council," Murakami added.
Oh- well, that explains it all- it’s just a coincidence. Those stupid Hawaiians just threw their dead all over the place and randomly and independently decided to inter their dead there in a concentration that exponentially outstrips most other nearby locations of “iwi kupuna”
Apparently there was no actual plan to screw poor Joe Brescia 500 years in the future by burying all the bodes in one place bodies there.
Well, we’d better pull our tongue out of our cheek long enough to ask if McMahon’s contention exposes anything but the depth of depravity of the administrative scope of genocide that continues to percolate through the Hawai`i State apparatus.
If she contends that despite the concentration of 30 full sets of remains in an 18,000-square-foot beachfront property it was not purposefully done as what westerners would call a cemetery she obviously presumes that the pre-western contact Hawaiians were too dumb to coordinate a place to inter their dead.
After all those brown skinned people are akin to a bunch of animals who have no capacity to concentrate their burials in a certain area with any intent..
Because as we all know a concentration of trees is not forest- unless you look at a dictionary.
The significance of this is that McMahon has used this as the premise- in addition to using tortured readings the law- to take away authority from the burial council to preserve the area.
And so Wantanbe acceded to this shibai by accepting the “30 burials do not a cemetery make” postulate in allowing construction to continue at least until the hearing continues weeks from now, saying essentially the only reason she wasn’t dismissing the case was that "I understand the community is split... I understand the need for finality and ... some closure." according to Finnegan.
This is the same judge that, for example, refused to allow public examination of the minutes of a Kaua`i County Council Executive session minutes as the OIP called for because it was “impossibly intertwined” with the material OIP had suggested be redacted when the rest was released.
What is it with Kaua`i judges? Well maybe it’s that “once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat”.
With Wantanbe and ex-politician Randall Valenciano- he of the famous refusal to hear the challenges to the Superferry after the Supreme Court remanding to a similar court on Maui- filling the bench over here we can expect any tortured reading of the law that allows political manipulation of people’s rights to be upheld.
If Decosta and Cronin finally do get canned we have a feeling that they’d always have a job on Kaua`i where our government functionaries can just make up the law as they go along and get their former cronies, now on the bench, to uphold them.
But with the way some are being ridiculed by judges lately you’d think people like Honolulu County clerk Denise Decosta and Chief Elections officer Kevin Cronin would show some integrity or at least shame- and resign.
Cronin’s penchant for making it up as he goes along- as pilloried by an administrative judge last week was- surpassed by Decosta in her convoluted attempt to keep a citizen initiative against rail in Honolulu off the ballot because even though it was legally submitted to qualify for the general election the petitioners mentioned a special election in their preface.
Judge Karl Sakamoto’s now “instant classic” ruling yesterday that “(t)he voice of the people should not be suffocated by the erroneous readings of the law by its own government" was apparently part of a new spate of recent rulings by judges asking government officials “what am I an idiot?” in light of their intentional administrative twistings of the law.
The actual Honlulu City Charter provisions- which trumps the confusing special ordinance and administrative rules- says:
Any petition for proposed ordinance which has been filed with the council at least ninety days prior to a general election and which has been certified by the clerk, shall be submitted to electors for the aforementioned general election."
So how old is Decosta? Six? When they read her the actual prevailing rules of the game she apparently pointed to an out of context phrase, showed us what her mommy said, put her fingers in her ears and yelled “You said it- nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah- I can’t hear you- nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.”
But on Kaua`i we’ve apparently got a new judge for whom the answer to what am I an idiot? is an unqualified “yes” when it comes to abuses of administrative a-holes
But what do you expect? Firth Circuit Court judge Kathleen Wantanbe came straight from the government bureaucracy to her perch on the bench and seemingly her rulings don’t just give the benefit of the doubt to government officials but they consider complaints about it to be a nuisance- just like her bureaucratic brethren .
Yesterday’s hearing in Joe Brescia’s genocide and desecration case was punctuated by a distinct flavor of telling the government that they can do no wrong if press reports are accurate.
First she ruled that only the reportedly allegedly corrupt Kaua`i State Archeologist Nancy McMahon could testify but not archeologist Dr. Michael “No Pun Intended” Graves who represented the aggrieved iwi and their descendents.
Independent reporter Joan Conrow described it this way this morning
Before the proceedings got to that place, Watanabe refused to qualify Dr. Michael Graves, a witness called by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., as an expert in Hawaiian archaeology. Never mind that he spent 21 years at UH teaching undergraduate and graduate students in archaeology and served as head of the department.
Since that prohibited Graves from discussing whether the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) acted properly in its treatment of the Naue burials, much of the hearing was devoted to Kauai state archaeologist Nancy McMahon defending her decisions regarding the burials there.
What a surprise- a career government lawyer deciding that self-serving government officials’ testimony is expert- even one whose job is in jeopardy, being under fire for not knowing what the heck she is doing, what the law really says and lying to both the Kaua`i Burial Council and Planning Commission- and denying a private sector university professor with no bone to pick, so to speak.
And what they were arguing about puts the meter on Wantanabe’s “what am I an idiot?” rating in the red zone.
As Star-Bulletin reporter Tom Finnegan said today
The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp.. argued that the state archaeologist reversed the decision of the Kauai Ni`ihau Burial Council when she allowed Brescia's contractors to build the home and cap seven grave sites with concrete.
Chandler's lawyers blame state Historic Preservation Division archaeologist and Kauai County Council candidate Nancy McMahon for pushing through both the permits at the county level and the burial council's plan to keep the burials in place. Then, the lawyers argued, she approved the contractor's plan without returning to the burial council for its input.
McMahon, who testified yesterday, said that... no evidence has been found that would make anyone believe the area was a cemetery, rather than 30 individual graves. (emphasis added)
However, Alan Murakami, Chandler's lawyer, said that the burial council wanted to preserve the burials as a unit, and McMahon took it on her own to interpret its ruling.
By allowing the house to be built atop the graves, rather than preserving them, "the state has disemboweled the burial council," Murakami added.
Oh- well, that explains it all- it’s just a coincidence. Those stupid Hawaiians just threw their dead all over the place and randomly and independently decided to inter their dead there in a concentration that exponentially outstrips most other nearby locations of “iwi kupuna”
Apparently there was no actual plan to screw poor Joe Brescia 500 years in the future by burying all the bodes in one place bodies there.
Well, we’d better pull our tongue out of our cheek long enough to ask if McMahon’s contention exposes anything but the depth of depravity of the administrative scope of genocide that continues to percolate through the Hawai`i State apparatus.
If she contends that despite the concentration of 30 full sets of remains in an 18,000-square-foot beachfront property it was not purposefully done as what westerners would call a cemetery she obviously presumes that the pre-western contact Hawaiians were too dumb to coordinate a place to inter their dead.
After all those brown skinned people are akin to a bunch of animals who have no capacity to concentrate their burials in a certain area with any intent..
Because as we all know a concentration of trees is not forest- unless you look at a dictionary.
The significance of this is that McMahon has used this as the premise- in addition to using tortured readings the law- to take away authority from the burial council to preserve the area.
And so Wantanbe acceded to this shibai by accepting the “30 burials do not a cemetery make” postulate in allowing construction to continue at least until the hearing continues weeks from now, saying essentially the only reason she wasn’t dismissing the case was that "I understand the community is split... I understand the need for finality and ... some closure." according to Finnegan.
This is the same judge that, for example, refused to allow public examination of the minutes of a Kaua`i County Council Executive session minutes as the OIP called for because it was “impossibly intertwined” with the material OIP had suggested be redacted when the rest was released.
What is it with Kaua`i judges? Well maybe it’s that “once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat”.
With Wantanbe and ex-politician Randall Valenciano- he of the famous refusal to hear the challenges to the Superferry after the Supreme Court remanding to a similar court on Maui- filling the bench over here we can expect any tortured reading of the law that allows political manipulation of people’s rights to be upheld.
If Decosta and Cronin finally do get canned we have a feeling that they’d always have a job on Kaua`i where our government functionaries can just make up the law as they go along and get their former cronies, now on the bench, to uphold them.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
IT’S FOR YOU- SOMEONE NAMED “WOOF”:
IT’S FOR YOU- SOMEONE NAMED “WOOF”: One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy, three ringy-dingy strikes and you’re out.
They’re fleeing in droves and shockingly the ghostly descendents of Ernestine at Hawaiian Tel report $30 million in quarterly losses for a total of $201 million sinceVerizon pawned it off on Carlyle Group a couple of years ago.
And while the top bosses blame it on cell phones and the fact that the cable company is raking in their customers with a much better deal, the local Baby Bell isn’t exactly making the decision to give up on standard telephones a hard one for consumers
We gave it up and threw out the spaghetti of semi-functional rusty phone connectors and wires almost a year and a half ago when billing nightmares- some going back two, even three years- left us so pissed off that we cut the phone company’s line and went with the one-price including the bells and whistles, no long distance charge cable company’s phone.
No, we don’t work for Oceanic Cable, which is a piece of work in and of itself. We just recognize a better business plan when we see it.
But the main motivating factor in ditching HawaiianTel- other than keeping our old number- which the phone company wouldn’t do- was that it had become impossible to resolve their billing errors- and we mean literally impossible.
Not only did we have long distance charges that were bogus, we were being double-billed for them by both HawaiianTel and AT&T. And we were being billed for DSL at a 50% higher rate than we contracted for. And later when we cancelled the DSL we were still getting billed for it for six months.
We even got the DSL guys to tell us we weren’t getting it but the billing people were either incapable contacting him wouldn’t believe him..
And, each time we called we didn’t get the usual “sure- I’ll take care of that for you” that we’d gotten from the their service reps for many years, we got “No. Tough. Pay us now. Good bye.”
We started paying just for local service each month, trying to work it out. And they would deduct that amount from our bill. And so of course the longer it went, the more muddled it got because the amount on the bill that they said we owed them had no relationship to whatever we were supposed to be paying for.
For more than a year and a half, once a month or so we dutifully yanked out the bulging file with yellowing, dog-eared bills, notes, receipts and the like and detailed our story to the next in a string of eleventy-twelve service reps, supervisors and assorted flack-catchers.. each one of them progressively ruder and more obnoxious than the last.
And unlike in the past when it seemed like they detailed everything said and done on every call for every rep to see, now they had no record of the last call.
Most of them would finally say they would check our bills and get back to us- but no one ever did.. We’d instead get clueless calls saying pay us now.
Then finally we called one time and were told they couldn’t access our old bills because they were now too old.
This all culminated in the famous blackout where no one could use the phone to call the phone company for six months. When that ended no one could find any of our bills so sorting out all the various charges was impossible.
Then we wrote to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and told them we were willing to detail what we owed and what we didn’t one last time- but only to the PUC because we had told the story to at least a dozen people at Hawaiian Tel only to have to start over with the next rep when the old one didn’t call back or have a record of the last call.
Instead of asking us for the details, after six months without reply we received a one sentence letter from the PUC saying they checked with Hawaiian Tel and we owed them whatever they said we owned them.
When they call now - on our cable company phone- we tell them to “sue us”.
We thought we were an exceptional case until today but when we read the comments on the article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin we found that our problems were as common as mangoes in June and rectifications as rare as a fresh one in December.
Here’s some of the horror stories in today’s comments.
14 months to resolve billing problems at my old work place.12 months to refund me $18 after terminating service.Not to mention the hours upon hours trying to get HawaiianTel to rectify these problems.Then $100+ to start up (phone service only) again after moving to a new place.How'd they lose money???? I really have no idea *sarcasm*Recently I just terminated my HawaiianTel service again, hopefully they get their billing straight because I don't want to waste time being transferred all over the place again.
----------
I too, had been overcharged $80+ and after being on hold for 30+ minutes for probably 6 or more calls, got them to admit it and send me a refund check. Then when I deposited it, I got a 'stop payment' charge from my bank for $20. So they now owe me over $100!But I gave up so its been over 2 years. And you should see how I vent my dissatisfaction.I am personally responsible for switching probably 50+ people from DSL to RR, and from landline to VOIP.They all love it! And some of them took me to lunch to thank me for their monthly savings!
-----------
It's been over two years and the billing for phone services for our business is STILL not correct and they seem to have no clue on how to fix it.
--------------
fix the biggest problem - billing and provide credits - ASAP! People are leaving because they are fed up. All it takes is a bill screwup that goes unfixed, i would leave too.
-------------
HawTel also needs to fix its billing system problems ASAP. It has lost thousands of customers, maybe even tens of thousands, to month after month after month of overbilling -- and customer reps who apparently are not empowered to issue an overbilled customer a bill credit on the spot or send the customer a check for the amount of the overbilling if the amount of the overbilling exceeds a certain threshold. Wake up! Those whopping overbillings need the quickest attention of all. The average person does not have the financial wherewithal to weather those overbillings. We cut our losses and cancelled our service when we got overbilled two months straight by a total of over $400 and HawTel's reps couldn't do anything about it except refer the matter to another group where it appears to have disappeared down a black hole.HawTel has a great heritage, but GTE and Verizon gutted the company of experienced employees, and when the company was sold to Carlyle, the back-office systems were not part of the deal, so the company was hobbled right out of the gate and continues to be so today.
If just the mention of HawTel’s losses in an article spurs this many people to explain to them why, you can bet there are a lot more who are just dying to cut the cord but somehow haven’t gotten around to it.
The cable company is no great shakes either. It takes forever to get through to them and they’ve got their own customer service lies and misrepresentations.
Don’t believe them when they tell you that you can use your current phone jacks. And expect to run all your phones off one connection in the back of your cable box so you either need a tangle of wires running throughout the house or have to buy one of those four-in-one wireless phone gizmos for at least 50 bucks.
But at least with one price for everything there’s none of the arguing with the different divisions and a separate long distance carrier, all of whom seem to think that they can act like little Ernestines.
But for the corporate morons at the phone company to tell us they are losing money because people are going to cell-phones and the cable company due to circumstances beyond their control is absurd.
People are switching when they finally get fed up with the way they do business.
If you’ve dealt with the cable company you’re not exactly doing the Feiffer’s dance of joy at the prospect of letting them provide another service.
And we all know cell phones are a rip off- people spent a hundred years perfecting the sound of a telephone so that you can hear everything clearly from halfway across the globe only to be stuck now with scratchy, distorted sound that may or may not work if you don’t stand on the roof and twist yourself into a pretzel... not to mention the per-call pricing.
No one is really happy with their cell phone service- that’s why the salespeople are always asking us that question.
And why exactly did we allow 87 cell phone companies each with their own sets of antennas? Why do we allow contracts and “plans” more complicated than the moon landing?
So it’s not like we’re enraptured with the alternatives. More likely than not, people are ditching the pho-co because they’ve had it with some interaction with the phone company’s service reps.
So why do we put up with all this?
Probably because any sane regulation has been preempted in our pseudo-democracy of American corporate governance.
Modern business models are designed to screw their employees and customers. And we’ve gotten so used to it we don’t even question it any more when we’re asked to bend over- we just ask “how far”.
It’s as American as Ma Bell.
They’re fleeing in droves and shockingly the ghostly descendents of Ernestine at Hawaiian Tel report $30 million in quarterly losses for a total of $201 million sinceVerizon pawned it off on Carlyle Group a couple of years ago.
And while the top bosses blame it on cell phones and the fact that the cable company is raking in their customers with a much better deal, the local Baby Bell isn’t exactly making the decision to give up on standard telephones a hard one for consumers
We gave it up and threw out the spaghetti of semi-functional rusty phone connectors and wires almost a year and a half ago when billing nightmares- some going back two, even three years- left us so pissed off that we cut the phone company’s line and went with the one-price including the bells and whistles, no long distance charge cable company’s phone.
No, we don’t work for Oceanic Cable, which is a piece of work in and of itself. We just recognize a better business plan when we see it.
But the main motivating factor in ditching HawaiianTel- other than keeping our old number- which the phone company wouldn’t do- was that it had become impossible to resolve their billing errors- and we mean literally impossible.
Not only did we have long distance charges that were bogus, we were being double-billed for them by both HawaiianTel and AT&T. And we were being billed for DSL at a 50% higher rate than we contracted for. And later when we cancelled the DSL we were still getting billed for it for six months.
We even got the DSL guys to tell us we weren’t getting it but the billing people were either incapable contacting him wouldn’t believe him..
And, each time we called we didn’t get the usual “sure- I’ll take care of that for you” that we’d gotten from the their service reps for many years, we got “No. Tough. Pay us now. Good bye.”
We started paying just for local service each month, trying to work it out. And they would deduct that amount from our bill. And so of course the longer it went, the more muddled it got because the amount on the bill that they said we owed them had no relationship to whatever we were supposed to be paying for.
For more than a year and a half, once a month or so we dutifully yanked out the bulging file with yellowing, dog-eared bills, notes, receipts and the like and detailed our story to the next in a string of eleventy-twelve service reps, supervisors and assorted flack-catchers.. each one of them progressively ruder and more obnoxious than the last.
And unlike in the past when it seemed like they detailed everything said and done on every call for every rep to see, now they had no record of the last call.
Most of them would finally say they would check our bills and get back to us- but no one ever did.. We’d instead get clueless calls saying pay us now.
Then finally we called one time and were told they couldn’t access our old bills because they were now too old.
This all culminated in the famous blackout where no one could use the phone to call the phone company for six months. When that ended no one could find any of our bills so sorting out all the various charges was impossible.
Then we wrote to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and told them we were willing to detail what we owed and what we didn’t one last time- but only to the PUC because we had told the story to at least a dozen people at Hawaiian Tel only to have to start over with the next rep when the old one didn’t call back or have a record of the last call.
Instead of asking us for the details, after six months without reply we received a one sentence letter from the PUC saying they checked with Hawaiian Tel and we owed them whatever they said we owned them.
When they call now - on our cable company phone- we tell them to “sue us”.
We thought we were an exceptional case until today but when we read the comments on the article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin we found that our problems were as common as mangoes in June and rectifications as rare as a fresh one in December.
Here’s some of the horror stories in today’s comments.
14 months to resolve billing problems at my old work place.12 months to refund me $18 after terminating service.Not to mention the hours upon hours trying to get HawaiianTel to rectify these problems.Then $100+ to start up (phone service only) again after moving to a new place.How'd they lose money???? I really have no idea *sarcasm*Recently I just terminated my HawaiianTel service again, hopefully they get their billing straight because I don't want to waste time being transferred all over the place again.
----------
I too, had been overcharged $80+ and after being on hold for 30+ minutes for probably 6 or more calls, got them to admit it and send me a refund check. Then when I deposited it, I got a 'stop payment' charge from my bank for $20. So they now owe me over $100!But I gave up so its been over 2 years. And you should see how I vent my dissatisfaction.I am personally responsible for switching probably 50+ people from DSL to RR, and from landline to VOIP.They all love it! And some of them took me to lunch to thank me for their monthly savings!
-----------
It's been over two years and the billing for phone services for our business is STILL not correct and they seem to have no clue on how to fix it.
--------------
fix the biggest problem - billing and provide credits - ASAP! People are leaving because they are fed up. All it takes is a bill screwup that goes unfixed, i would leave too.
-------------
HawTel also needs to fix its billing system problems ASAP. It has lost thousands of customers, maybe even tens of thousands, to month after month after month of overbilling -- and customer reps who apparently are not empowered to issue an overbilled customer a bill credit on the spot or send the customer a check for the amount of the overbilling if the amount of the overbilling exceeds a certain threshold. Wake up! Those whopping overbillings need the quickest attention of all. The average person does not have the financial wherewithal to weather those overbillings. We cut our losses and cancelled our service when we got overbilled two months straight by a total of over $400 and HawTel's reps couldn't do anything about it except refer the matter to another group where it appears to have disappeared down a black hole.HawTel has a great heritage, but GTE and Verizon gutted the company of experienced employees, and when the company was sold to Carlyle, the back-office systems were not part of the deal, so the company was hobbled right out of the gate and continues to be so today.
If just the mention of HawTel’s losses in an article spurs this many people to explain to them why, you can bet there are a lot more who are just dying to cut the cord but somehow haven’t gotten around to it.
The cable company is no great shakes either. It takes forever to get through to them and they’ve got their own customer service lies and misrepresentations.
Don’t believe them when they tell you that you can use your current phone jacks. And expect to run all your phones off one connection in the back of your cable box so you either need a tangle of wires running throughout the house or have to buy one of those four-in-one wireless phone gizmos for at least 50 bucks.
But at least with one price for everything there’s none of the arguing with the different divisions and a separate long distance carrier, all of whom seem to think that they can act like little Ernestines.
But for the corporate morons at the phone company to tell us they are losing money because people are going to cell-phones and the cable company due to circumstances beyond their control is absurd.
People are switching when they finally get fed up with the way they do business.
If you’ve dealt with the cable company you’re not exactly doing the Feiffer’s dance of joy at the prospect of letting them provide another service.
And we all know cell phones are a rip off- people spent a hundred years perfecting the sound of a telephone so that you can hear everything clearly from halfway across the globe only to be stuck now with scratchy, distorted sound that may or may not work if you don’t stand on the roof and twist yourself into a pretzel... not to mention the per-call pricing.
No one is really happy with their cell phone service- that’s why the salespeople are always asking us that question.
And why exactly did we allow 87 cell phone companies each with their own sets of antennas? Why do we allow contracts and “plans” more complicated than the moon landing?
So it’s not like we’re enraptured with the alternatives. More likely than not, people are ditching the pho-co because they’ve had it with some interaction with the phone company’s service reps.
So why do we put up with all this?
Probably because any sane regulation has been preempted in our pseudo-democracy of American corporate governance.
Modern business models are designed to screw their employees and customers. And we’ve gotten so used to it we don’t even question it any more when we’re asked to bend over- we just ask “how far”.
It’s as American as Ma Bell.
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